Metal

Definition of the term metal

Metal is a musical species of the rock genre (as such, it's made with three instruments: guitar, bass, drums) native to the 80s, characterized: ideologically by a morbidly and irremediably pessimistic conception (hence the systematic, obsessive adoption of the color "black"), when not by sadistic retaliation, of the human and natural condition seen as vortexes of brute forces understood sometimes in Manichean terms (metal), sometimes nihilistically (heavy metal), but always based on a law of evil that appears constitutive of existence; musically, metal is characterized by an extremist development of the violence and rhythmic/timbral speed of the 70s hard-rock strand, which was instead marked by a more optimistic and hedonistic approach to life, as well as a reactionary and active stance — a condition that ends up being the opposite and antithesis of metal. Metal is epic music: man is at the center of the cosmos (when, in the more refined and heavy versions of metal, the cosmos itself isn't taken as the subject, shifting from a historical pessimism to a cosmic one), and all the forces making it up work programmatically to damn him, who, willing or not, whether to live or to die, must fight, and must do so under the banner of an underlying, quasi-religious ethic and nobility unknown to, and opposed by, punk. The final metal message is grandiloquent and emphatic, if not rhetorical: it advocates and demands unconditional survival even against everyone and everything — or rather, precisely because it's against everyone and everything.

History and Phenomenology of Metal: From Its Origins to the End of the Century

Unlike punk (= Sex Pistols), metal is not a revolution but a slow evolution starting at the end of the 60s (Deep Purple), even though it only broke free from its own prehistory in revolutionary fashion at the start of the 80s, with clearly defined albums and artists. Like the punk one, the metal revolution was conceptual and musical, in a word "cultural". Only, being two different cultures — one of "live fast and die young" (Circle Jerks), the other of "born to lose, live to win" (Motorhead) — they played out one in a single season (1977), the other, after a decade of preparation (the 70s), over at least another decade (the 80s). Technically, the first stirrings of metal (and thus something "other" than it) appeared in England with Deep Purple (see "In Rock", 1970), led by pyrotechnic guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who, by injecting unprecedented hard-rock speed and power into progressive-rock (Cream), pushed further than anyone had dared before, establishing themselves as the loudest and most extreme band of the era (every member of the group literally gives their all in performance). The "improper", anti-peace-and-love lyrics already foreshadow what would become metal's trademark splendors (fire, speed, explosion, violence, evil, cosmic scale), even if they hadn't yet plunged into the "other world" — the realm of darkness (which metalheads would call the explicit truth of this one). The keyboards that play such a large part in Deep Purple's malevolent, "flambé" sound would later be adopted only by the least orthodox — and ultimately least metal — metal outfits. If Deep Purple began teaching the technical ABCs, Black Sabbath (see "Paranoid", 1970), also English, supplied the content. Aside from Tony Iommi's hugely significant contribution to metal technique — he was the first to systematically draw a dark, Mephistophelian, oppressive, powerful sound from the guitar — Black Sabbath were seminal for the diabolical aura they injected into the rock world.

With them, for the first time, we reach that parallel universe made of evil, monsters and curses, whose striking, expressionistic imagery is meant to serve as an allegory for understanding the true nature of everyday life. The first to use Deep Purple's violent, cutting technique (to which they added the systematic use of the double bass drum pedal, the symbol and expedient of metal par excellence) to describe living-while-dying in a necessary consecration to the forces of evil proper to the Sabbath universe were, again, the English: Judas Priest (see "Sad Wings Of Destiny", 1976). While the first notable proto-metal group from across the ocean (specifically a precursor of progressive-metal) were the Canadian Rush (see "2112", 1976), who built a parallel world that was, yes, but not sorcerous like Sabbath's — rather science-fictional and, at times, paradisiacal — Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio's Rainbow brought the Deep Purple lesson to its epic peak (here's the Sabbath influence at work) (see "Rising", 1976, reaffirmed by Dio with "Holy Diver", 1983). Meanwhile, while 1976 proved to be the single most important year for metal's prehistory, England saw the activity of a brazen group that, armed with techniques essentially derived from garage-rock, if not rhythm and blues, produced effects just as savage — if not more so — than any metal band's, while starting from a punk dimension (thus nihilistic rather than Manichean) that had always been foreign and opposed to the metal milieu: it was Motorhead (see "No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith", 1981), the first to put metal to use describing thoroughly realistic, everyday frustrations (born of the devaluation of all values) and everyday evils: they would be followed by New York's Plasmatics, punk attitude and metal sounds, fronted by one of the most evocative and terrifying voices in history: Wendy Williams (see "Beyond The Valley Of 1984", 1981).

Although for different reasons (the former for their "punk" dimension, the latter for their "underground" one) not ideologically reducible to the metal strand, two of the most influential groups in rock history were fundamental to its extremist evolution: D.R.I., who with their supersonic, miniaturized hardcore dictated its speed (see "Dirty Rotten Lp", 1983: the fastest/most violent album ever made), and Swans, who with their industrial singer-songwriter music for zombies can be considered the heaviest-sounding band of all time (see "Filth", which, not only when it came out in 1983 but even today, can be counted among the most extreme records ever made). Many notable groups capable of writing memorable songs, between the late 70s and early 80s, tried to enrich and evolve the masters' lesson. They took a thousand steps forward toward codifying metal (already achieved in some tracks), yet without managing (through a truly significant cultural work: an album) to mark a decisive, radical turning point as would happen at the start of the 80s (a turning point that would take time to be absorbed: witness the various bands straddling metal and hard-rock active throughout the 80s, like New York's Twisted Sister with "Stay Hungry", or Los Angeles's Wasp with their self-titled album, both in 1984). These groups were (not coincidentally, as with the masters) all English, and were said to belong to the "NWOBHM" movement (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal), the metal counterpart to the late-70s dark scene: there were the rock'n'roll Saxon (see "Wheels Of Steel", 1980); the shooting stars Diamond Head (see "Lightning To The Nation", 1980), capable of making an album that is compositionally among the most extraordinary in all of rock, yet penalized by a dreadful production and a sound too rooted in the 70s (played differently — see Metallica — these songs' writing is already, in every respect, heavy metal); and the Sabbath-indebted Angelwitch (see "Angelwitch", 1980). Among these, at first, was also counted the group that, in hindsight, can be considered the very first institutionalizer of classic metal: London's Iron Maiden (see "Iron Maiden", 1980), who sublimated, both in content and form, the lesson of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest: after them, no album could call itself metal unless it took as its reference point the dictates — speed, violence, symphonic structure, horror lyrics and artwork — that they established.

Iron Maiden were the last and most mature offshoot to emerge from the evolution of the Deep Purple sound. Up until 1980, metal can be considered an essentially English phenomenon. Just like punk. America was answering the latter with hardcore-punk. Via hardcore, "American metal" (later, by extension, "heavy metal") would also take shape. Before reaching that fateful 1983, there were three years of metal's discourse spreading worldwide, along with seminal though not decisive further advances (especially thematically) from a series of historic, unforgettable bands: the German Accept (see "Restless & Wild", 1982) and Scorpions (see "Blackout", 1982), very tied to old-style hard-rock yet excellent on a few tracks of "metal avant-garde": the former foreshadowed what would become "power metal", the latter made use of recording techniques capable of yielding a terrifying, unusually brutal sound for the era (bettered only by Motorhead's); the American Warlord laid the groundwork for power-epic-metal (see "Deliver Us", 1982); the English Venom (see "Black Metal", 1982) were the first to introduce the "rat-in-the-throat" vocal device and stood out for a fast violence already foreshadowing Metallica, as well as for a fetishistic, spectacular satanism; the Canadian Exciter (see "Violence & Force", 1983) consolidated the prehistory of what would become power-epic-metal, intensifying and simplifying various Judas Priest devices; the American Motley Crue (see "Too Fast For Love", 1982) are, thematically (due to their "hedonism"), a hard-rock band like Scorpions, but like them played some role in metal's evolution thanks to an uncompromising sound, of a violence, heaviness and speed never heard before and still today (among the few) literally capable of deafening. After 1982 had been for metal what 1966 was for rock (proto-everything but nothing yet made explicit before the annus mirabilis of 1967), in 1983 Los Angeles's Metallica fused American hardcore and English metal (Motorhead had already had a similar intuition, though less systematically, and though they'd had only garage-rock, hard-rock and rhythm and blues at their disposal), pulling off a revolution matched only by that of the Sex Pistols.

"Heavy metal" differs from "metal" not only (at least initially) geographically, but fundamentally through that extra "heavy" — something apparently simple, yet which took rock almost 20 years to achieve. The extreme becomes flesh: speed, power, obsessiveness, percussiveness, all perfected and formalized. We can speak of invention without any doubt. What came before, in the "heavy" field, can be called next to nothing. From the themes of Iron Maiden — horrid as they were, yet still "fantastical", still seeking to interpret our world figuratively through a parallel universe — we move to pure concepts: concrete realities, universal and all the more terrifying and thought-provoking for being nailed down to the point of nihilism, of death, of suffering, of the malaise of living. For the first time, there's no more reacting. Not even punk had gone this far. In punk you died fast, but at least beforehand you lived; here (and it's the lesson of "inhuman" hardcore) the very substance and value of life itself is called into question. "Kill 'Em All" invents "thrash-metal" and "speed-metal", sometimes considered subgenres of "heavy metal" (so we still haven't properly arrived at institutionalized "heavy metal") but which it's more correct to keep distinct from it (since there exists a concrete example of the latter, different from what came before).

"Thrash-metal" is the most extreme, least melodic and most essential version of early-80s metal. Built on a particular rhythm-guitar technique ("palm muting"), it can be called the metal version of D.R.I.'s hardcore-punk (unless one identifies their sound as thrash too). Relatively short tracks (3-4 minutes), manifesto-lyrics set in an urban milieu, sloppy arrangements: everyone has to "thrash" their instrument as violently and obsessively as possible (like a carpet-beater or a machine gun, depending on the case), then an agonized chorus that at other volumes might almost sound melodic, almost rock: but rigorously, no bridge, no slowing down, ever. For this there's "speed-metal", a perfected, more articulated, ennobled and rhetorically enriched form of "thrash": the drums begin to converse with the other instruments, which launch into distinguishable, more or less hard-rock solos; themes can be far more varied and narrative; song lengths stretch out (often past 5 minutes). Speed demands, besides obviously great executional speed, a high level of technique too: its sound is clearer, more precise and cleaner than thrash's, and the notes must be recognizable. Both speed and thrash were born in opposition to the "melodic" NWOBHM, in a clash that can be seen as one between city and countryside, new and old, reality and fantasy, ugly and beautiful, and nihilism versus Manicheism. With "Ride The Lightning" (1984), Metallica invent heavy metal by synthesizing speed and thrash within a single track, which thus becomes: long (over 5 minutes), powerful and fast (but often alternating soft/loud passages all the way to acoustic sections), technical, sung without punk screaming but with a more epic composure that's nonetheless no less brutal: the themes now spell out concepts through contextualized examples and are no longer, or not merely, a punk harangue. With the template born, variants are expected. Before these, though, there are still several intermediate stages. On the other side of America, New York's Manowar (geographically remote from hardcore too), in parallel to Metallica, were following their own path to metal, arriving at sonorities as intense as Venom's, and thus among the most brutal of all. Ideologically too, Manowar immediately presented themselves as spokesmen for a parallel world, as the most orthodox English metal school wanted (thus sidestepping its more hard-rock elements), rather than being directly concerned with reality (except insofar as their world became reality as such, or in any case an interpretation of it). At first they carried out their mission still hemmed in by hard-rock, but already on their second, masterpiece album (see "Into Glory Ride", 1983) they arrived at a heavy metal (later called "epic", but still very "existential" — that is, not escapist, and thus of much greater conceptual value) all their own: neither thrash, nor speed, nor Metallica. And yet, as happens with contemporaneous, independent scientific inventions, future metal would be entirely based on Metallica (who can thus be called its fathers), while only one branch of it (the "epic" one) would look back to Manowar, who at first were not "epic" (neither formally — far less power-driven — nor in content — far more interested in reality), and would in any case always pass through the Metallica school. Besides winning out over Manowar, Metallica would also win out over Iron Maiden, the most essential bridge of all between old and new, yet historically subject to a similar fate (their balance between reality and fantasy, epos and the everyday, was similar) as Manowar. It was fast violence that Metallica possessed more than anyone else, and that would become the ABC for metal to come (especially in the 90s), which can thus be seen as a series of sub-species of the "heavy". Before this future arrived, there's the English case of the Sabbath-indebted Mercyful Fate, a group torn between old and new because born right in the middle of the Metallica revolution, who demonstrate (all the more to Metallica's credit) with a masterpiece album (see "Melissa", 1983) how it was easier to evolve in the "power" field than in the "thrash-speed" one. The English, like the New Yorkers, lacked hardcore-punk, or didn't know how to put it to metal's use. For a long time (until an unconscious internalization took place in the early 90s, when it became clear that the same content could be expressed all the more effectively the more force and power one had at one's disposal), heavy metal was identified with thrash and speed, in opposition to power and epic, which drew on the classic metal of Iron Maiden.

The mid-80s were the golden age for thrash and speed, especially in America, home to thrashers Exodus (see "Bonded By Blood", 1985) and Megadeth, led by ex-Metallica member Dave Mustaine (see "Peace Sells... But Who's Buying, 1986). In Germany, Kreator were remarkable (see "Pleasure To Kill", 1986). 1985 marks a turning point after which, for five years, there would be a concentration of revolutionary groups capable of using the Metallica toolkit for the most varied purposes, all nonetheless centered on an ever-increasing violence and power of sound. In this gallery toward achieving a sound beyond which only the inhuman is conceivable, we find first the thrash masters Slayer, from Los Angeles (not by chance), capable, thanks to an exceptional drummer, Dave Lombardo, of reaching where no one had ever managed before, definitively sealing the hardcore-metal fusion: as if Metallica were interpreting D.R.I.: "Reign In Blood" (1986) is the most extreme rock album of all time.

At the same time, the "Scandinavian" factor emerges: just as there was NWOBHM, here comes "Scandinavian metal": a strand that continues to this day and that played the lion's share in metal at the turn of the millennium and beyond. This thanks to its extremism, from which (being a limit, or ceiling) any desired setting or application could be modulated. At bottom lies the "fantastical" Black Sabbath concept (foreign to the "realist" Metallica) of a Mephistophelian world populated by legendary, bloodthirsty, epic and sadistic evil forces (note: whereas Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden were great precisely because they kept, or used, parallel worlds to explain our own, here that correspondence is lost and our world no longer holds any interest). More than an escapist world, a world of torture is created — in the best cases, good as a cathartic outlet for the stresses of our own: extreme, nightmarish sounds and voices (see "rat-in-the-throat"), battle or torture. A hammering and persisting in these that, when it works, disfigures reality, laying bare its deepest and most brutal essence; when it doesn't, it remains (as in so many bands today) a stupid, clumsy end in itself. At the time of its birth, the "black-metal" strand (later, in its more "urban" and extreme variant, "death") was a major revolution (who knows whether the founding fathers Venom would have gone this far with other means at their disposal?), all the more so given it came from cold, remote lands, far removed from the heart of Western civilization and from rock itself.

Bathory were Swedish (see "Under The Sign Of The Black Mark", 1986), Mayhem were Norwegian, and, after their inspirers Mercyful Fate (whose leader King Diamond delivered the atmospheric power-sabbath of "Fatal Portrait" in 1986), the first to be truly satanic (see "Deathcrush", 1987). The seed for the extreme, epic-satanic-gothic strand came from another surprising land: Switzerland; it was embodied by Celtic Frost (see "Into The Pandemonium", 1987). Sweden's Candlemass (see "Nightfall", 1987) enriched dark-metal by inventing the modern "epic" style, from which today's "progressive-metal" would descend (also indebted to the power-speed of Germany's Halloween, see "Walls Of Jericho", 1986), which technically owes much to the neoclassical guitar grandiloquence of, of all people, Sweden's own Malmsteen (see "Rising Force", 1984).

While New York's Anthrax kept the thrash banner flying high, enriching it further (see "Among The Living", 1987), sonic extremism broke free of the fetishistic-satanic-epic cage of the Scandinavian lands to return to urban nightmares and to a grimly obsessive, pervasive expressionistic realism, one that sees the essence of everything in a blind conflagration of forces driven by chance: from Florida, Death (who started over from the "dark" sound of Bathory and Mayhem) transfigure thrash by doing violence to it, and systematically use the vocal effect (the guttural, deep, all-deforming, bestial and self-destructive rattle — a self-destruction that is as much the necessity of survival as the necessity of suffering proper to extreme metal) known as "rat-in-the-throat", inventing "death metal" (see "Leprosy", 1988); England's Napalm Death (the first in their home country to embrace the metal-hardcore fusion lesson) invent, by fusing death (rat-in-the-throat), thrash and hardcore, "grind-metal" (see "Scum", 1987). Meanwhile San Francisco's Testament kept the fortunes of the most orthodox heavy metal alive, though enriched with epic-rhetorical tones (see "The Legacy", 1987); Canada's Voivod pushed heavy metal (demonstrating its versatility, deploying its violence only when needed) — through vertiginous tempo changes, geometric, hypnotic compositions, and inhuman, apathetic, extraterrestrial modes — to post-industrial peaks fit to express post-modern content (see "Nothingface", 1989); and Los Angeles's Jane's Addiction played with metal through funk and cabaret for a bitter, alienated irony meant to represent existential melancholy (see "Nothing's Shocking", 1988).

Metal can be said to have completed its mission with the work of five groups who pushed its evolutionary ladder toward ever more violent, fast and inhuman sonorities to their extreme, unsurpassable conclusions: Sweden's Entombed applied "death" as an all-encompassing means of expressing the most varied content in deforming fashion (in this case horror-fantasy content still tethered to reality: see "Left Hand Path", 1990 [1989]); Carcass developed English "grind-metal", framing it within the horrors of a sadistic, post-industrial operating theater, with a sound so extreme in terms of speed and powerful obsessiveness that, in becoming intelligible, it almost achieves the opposite effect (see "Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious", 1991); Los Angeles's Dark Angel, led by misanthropic, complex-ridden drummer Gene Hoglan, delivered, between death and thrash, an infernal tour-de-force among the most extreme, alienated and inhuman in history, entirely centered on tragic, monstrous urban life (see "Time Does Not Heal", 1991); Texas's Pantera are the fathers of 2000s metal-rock (nonsensically dubbed "nu-metal"), grafting American hard-rock devices and themes (no parallel world here: only reality, and the crudest kind) onto a death-thrash framework, with an aggressive, outrageous spoken-rap delivery (see "Vulgar Display Of Power", 1992); and the English inventors of "gothic" (another application of "death", widely used by bands seeking parallel, fantasy worlds over the last decade) were Paradise Lost (see "Gothic", 1991). In the 90s, the various metal strands already expressed in the 80s merely became more popular and accessible (easier in their messaging). These were essentially reducible to three: classic metal (from which power-epic would take its cue, along with just a few inflections of the still-persisting traditional metal-hard rock), heavy metal (in its speed and thrash variants) and death metal (with dark and grind following in its wake). If in the 80s the average metal was thrash, in the 90s it became power-progressive.

Progressive (metal) (made famous by Queensryche, and commercially successful thanks to Dream Theater at the end of the 80s, who took it from Accept, Malmsteen, Mercyful Fate and Halloween) is an emphatic, grandiloquent strand built on vocal (falsetto) and instrumental (a schoolish speed, often an end in itself) technicalities, declaiming a pompous post-romanticism torn between epic-fantastical and urban-hard-rock settings. In its epic-power variant, it's a proliferation, in the wake of new-age culture, of stories and settings fished out here and there from fantasy writers — in any case more enjoyable, situation by situation, than when progressive plays the romantic-rhetorical card with hard-rock. See, for epic-power, Germany's symphonic Blind Guardian with "Nightfall In Middle-Earth" (1998), and for progressive-fantasy, Sweden's Stratovarius with "Visions" (1997).

Still within the "parallel-worlds" domain, without inventing anything new, but standing out for particularly worthwhile work updating Sabbath's "doom" sound (the guitar effect invented by Iommi that gives the sound its dark, slow, sorcerous gait) were the English — fascinating in their compromise between romanticism and contemporaneity — Anathema (see "The Silent Enigma", 1995), and the Portuguese black-gothic Moonspell (see "Wolfheart", 1995). More decisively committed to satanic, symphonic black metal were Sweden's Emperor (see "In The Nightside Eclipse", 1994 [1995]). To the "Gothenburg school" belongs the essential, existentialist (very hardcore-inflected) death metal of At The Gates (see the masterpiece "Slaughter Of The Soul", 1995), who can be considered the last metal band in history.

Coming from the existentialist-realist-conceptual side of things, the most direct sources plundered by today's nu-metal (we're in American territory here) are the underground-noise extremists Helmet (see the nihilist-Swans-esque masterpiece "Strap It On", 1990) and Pantera (metal-industrial-hardcore-rap, see "Vulgar Display Of Power", 1992): Korn (see "Korn", 1994) and Deftones (see "Around The Fur", 1997), both capable of the occasional excellent, cathartic composition, and preceded by the more rock-rap Rage Against The Machine ("Rage Against The Machine", 1992). In this same context, the Florida-based Marilyn Manson deserve separate mention, having revived the extreme garage-rock (see Stooges) of Plasmatics in a post-modern key (see the metal-industrial sound, inspired by Swans, of Nine Inch Nails's "Pretty Hate Machine", 1989), caught between (genuine) existentialism and (more or less staged) supernatural exaltation, all under the banner of a total, unshakeable nihilism (see "AntiChrist Superstar", 1996). The emphatic thrash of Testament is expertly "industrialized" toward post-modernism by the Americans Machine Head ("Burn In My Eyes", 1993) and Fear Factory ("Demanufacture", 1995), and even turned "ethnic" by the Brazilians Sepultura ("Roots", 1996).

Sublime post-metal output also came from two New York bands formed in the mid-80s: the alienated Prong, nihilistic on a par only with their "industrial" forefathers Swans (see the crushing, thoroughly despairing "total" masterpiece "Rude Awakening", 1996), and the classic-metal/hard rock outfit Savatage, with their equally emphatic and successful concept album "Streets" (1991). Fully representative of the post-metal era are the New Yorkers Type O Negative (see "Slow, Deep And Hard", 1991), who with their underground-industrial-gothic sound do the exact opposite of the other post-metal outfits (while still building on the lesson of the symphonic-thrash of the nihilistic, erotomaniac post-industrial-era Dark Angel): while those bands simplify 80s metal tropes by emphasizing and cross-pollinating them (making them ultimately "clearer" and more "direct", also thanks to overall technical progress, especially in recording and amplification), the post-metal of Type O Negative, heavily indebted to no-wave and noise, can be seen as a "lo-fi" "slow-metal" closer to Pussy Galore or Slint than to Death: as if the latter were covering the former. It's closer to the quietly nihilistic attitude of post-rock (Fugazi, Jesus Lizard) than to the explosive (rather than implosive) nihilism of post-metal (Korn, Fear Factory).

Albums released after '91 can be considered post-metal's answer to the post-rock of Fugazi, Jesus Lizard and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Post-metal became a huge commercial phenomenon in its progressive-power (above all) and death-black variants, and later still with nu-metal which, no longer knowing what else to draw on, circled back to old-school rock-rap. And post-metal is undoubtedly more popular than post-rock, given that the latter is regarded as "alternative" music: post-rock has to contend with the commercial wave of tiresome retro rock bands from the turn of the millennium, while post-metal (obviously classified as new-metal) has no separate external movement more directly plagiarizing the classics.

Any band not mentioned in this profile should be considered either non-metal or not significant to the genre's development up to the end of the millennium.

The saga continues: metal in the third millennium

The end of heavy metal as mainstream music, capable of producing albums and singles that become part of the cultural fabric shared by a broad, general, cross-generational audience, arrives with the advent of grunge. Although the Seattle scene absorbed many metal elements into its own sound, as with bands like Alice In Chains, it carefully avoided some of metal's defining traits: theatrical live performances, technical virtuosity, the supernatural and fantastical dimension. The genre's last gasp, at the close of the century, is nu-metal, which already belongs to a border territory: it thrives on cross-contamination, feeding as much on metal as on outside elements. It's no coincidence that the early years of the new century would find, in nu-metal's expanded language, the key to marking, in a different way, the history of music.

The biggest hit of the year 2000, and also the most commercially successful debut of this century, is "Hybrid Theory" by Linkin Park, a band destined to perfectly embody heavy metal's flight from itself, toward pop, rap-rock and electronic territory over the course of seven albums. The Californian band is a commercial superpower not just within metal, but across rock as a whole, and the sales figures of their first albums are simply extraordinary: 30 million copies for the above-mentioned debut, 27 million for the follow-up and 20 million for the third album. Their biggest hits, like "Crawling" and "In The End", are among the last examples of metal to remain firmly lodged in the memory even of casual listeners. By the end of the decade, though, even they seem destined for obscurity, as even the most cross-pollinated forms of metal struggle to break into the charts. The tragic death of singer Chester Bennington in 2017 appears to have definitively ended the band's career. 

In the early years of the decade other nu-metal bands also retained their relevance, including commercially: certainly the genre's founders Korn ("Issues" hits #1 on Billboard in 1999; the next three albums are all platinum-certified at home) and Limp Bizkit ("Chocolate Starfish And The Hot-Dog Flavored Water", 2001, sells over 8 million copies), but also decidedly more commercial, post-grunge-leaning acts like P.O.D. ("Satellite", 2001, sells 3 million copies) or the crowd-pleasing, country-at-heart Kid Rock (5 times platinum for "Cocky", 2001). Among the many newcomers of the early 2000s, Slipknot stand out in particular: with "Slipknot" (1999) and "Iowa" (2001) they have the merit of bringing metal extremism back into the charts, forging a language that manages to synthesize ten years of cross-contamination. During the 2000-2003 period nu-metal is still very strong in the charts and in terms of sales, even if many of the releases lack creativity, limiting themselves to variations on what the genre's founders had already offered at the turn of the millennium. The rap-metal of Papa Roach with "Infest" (2000) and the darker shades of Disturbed with "The Sickness" (2000) add supporting elements to a style that eventually runs its course, either by softening into more tame forms of rock, as happens with Incubus, who only belong to the history of metal in a marginal way, or by cross-pollinating so much that they essentially step outside the rock fold altogether, as is the case with another band with a short-lived run of success, Crazy Town. Of course, when this exploration branching out from metal is carried out with explosive creativity, it can still yield a sensational work like "Toxicity" (2001) by System Of A Down, which was also a considerable commercial success. In any case, by 2004 even this new metal wave already seems essentially spent: one could keep listing individual cases of commercial success, or works that can still be traced back to the nu-metal paradigm, but it's undeniable that the overall landscape already looks quite different by the middle of the decade.

The new reference style becomes metalcore, a hybrid of heavy metal and hardcore punk that reinterprets what happened in the 80s in light of the evolutions of the following two decades. Metalcore's fetish is the breakdown, a monstrous slowdown that heightens the power and heaviness of the sound, but the arsenal at its disposal is truly vast, allowing bands to inflect the new style in very different ways. While the first fusions between the metal and punk worlds relied on two still fairly simple vocabularies, this time the fusion is spectacular and far more elaborate, enriched by at least two more decades of accumulated experience. While the first attempts date back to the already-mentioned D.R.I. and Suicidal Tendencies, with roots in the metal passion of pivotal bands like Black Flag, it's a strand kept alive and evolved by many other underground acts throughout the 90s (Converge, Earth Crisis, Coalesce, Hatebreed, Botch, Shai Hulud, Dillinger Escape Plan). At the turn of the millennium it's Hatebreed, with "Perseverance" (2002), the follow-up to the influential "Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire" (1997), who lead metalcore's rise as the new reference metal genre. They would go on, with "The Rise Of Brutality" (2003) and "Supremacy" (2006), to explore the possibilities of a metalcore influenced by death metal and inclined toward the most unrestrained brutality, with a hardcore attitude at its core. The counterpoint to all that violence is the more melodic sound of bands like Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying, Trivium and Atreyu, who win over a sizeable audience despite some critical skepticism, partly resistant to seeing this new style reduced to an updated version of alt-metal, and partly simply irritated by how derivative the newcomers seemed compared to what bands such as the Swedish melodic death metal acts At The Gates, In Flames and Arch Enemy had already been doing many years earlier. An emblematic case is that of the American band Avenged Sevenfold, who debuted firmly within metalcore with "Sounding The Seventh Trumpet" (2001) and "Waking The Fallen" (2003), only to shift toward a far more palatable style for a mainstream audience on their third album "City Of Evil" (2005; 2.5 million copies sold), sung in a much more polished manner and influenced by hard rock and classic heavy metal, embracing a retro leaning that they share, as we'll see, with other bands of the era. Another interesting case is that of the Welsh band Bullet For My Valentine, influenced by more emo-leaning post-hardcore and by 80s gothic rock, yet still assimilable into the metalcore wave of the period with "The Poison" (2005) and "Scream Aim Fire" (2008), both also commercially successful. Overall, though, the phenomenon remains largely a US affair, one that nonetheless wins over an international audience of enthusiasts. 

The tail end of the metalcore wave can be labeled deathcore, a variant heavily influenced by the extreme death metal of bands like Suffocation, responsible for devastating and innovative works in the early 90s such as "Effigy Of The Forgotten" (1991) and "Pierced From Within" (1995), and championed by bands like the English Bring Me The Horizon, responsible for the debut "Count Your Blessings" (2006) but also the subsequent, more classically metalcore "Suicide Season" (2008), and the American Whitechapel and Suicide Silence. Although one could dig deeper into what happened in metalcore over the following decade, little or nothing deserves more attention than the bands already mentioned: there are exceptions like Cleric, or new crossover experiments like Emmure, influenced by nu-metal, but nothing that amounts to a truly living scene. Suffice it to say that as recently as 2020, amid rereadings of the classics and variations on the theme, bands like Code Orange continue to present themselves as contemporary expressions of the style, and every so often some name or other catches the attention of the world's most influential webzines and music sites.

Other, more minor variants of metalcore spread over the course of the century's first decade. Here we can cite, by way of example, the unstable blend of post-hardcore and metalcore, sometimes labeled "trance-core", of the English band Enter Shikari (see "Take To The Skies", 2007), the disorienting progressive formula of the Canadians Protest The Hero (see "Kezia", 2006) and certain progressive tendencies of bands like After The Burial (see "Forging A Future Self", 2006). This last example allows us to link back to a metal style that owes much to metal extremism but happily engages with the complex geometries of math-rock and the explosive tension of post-hardcore: math-core. Steeped in odd time signatures, polyrhythms and sudden shifts, it too can be traced back to the early Dillinger Escape Plan, as well as the already-mentioned Coalesce, Converge and Botch, considered in their most chaotic, labyrinthine and decidedly dissonant dimension. To give the reader a few names of particular note, one could mention, among others, Locust, DaCast, Genghis Tron, Rolo Tomassi, PsyOpus and Car Bomb.

Another metallic incarnation typical of the new millennium deserves separate mention: djent, inaugurated by the highly influential albums of the Swedish band Meshuggah, such as "Destroy Erase Improve" (1995) and "Chaosphere" (1998), but also by the monstrous 2004 EP "I", and carried forward by acts such as TesseracT ("One", 2011), Uneven Structure ("Februus", 2011), Periphery ("Periphery", 2010), Animals As Leaders ("Animals As Leaders", 2009), Textures ("Silhouettes", 2008). The style owes its name to the onomatopoeia imitating the sound of distorted, palm-muted guitar, but it also stands out for reclaiming the rhythmic complexity of math-core and the stylistic adventurousness of progressive metal. With the power of an increasingly pervasive and ubiquitous internet, djent, while still remaining a niche, has even reached the Polish band Kobong, responsible for "Chmury Nie Było" (1997), and the Chilean Coprofago ("Images of Despair", 1999), marking the emergence of one of the first examples of a truly globally diffused style.

Without managing to win over the masses the way it once did, some countries have kept the spotlight on the heavy metal world. Europe, especially northern and central Europe, has proven to be one of the most fertile and loyal markets, even toward not exactly accommodating bands such as the Norwegian symphonic-black outfit Dimmu Borgir or the Finnish melodic-death acts Children Of Bodom, while in Germany old familiar names like Blind Guardian have continued to enjoy widespread success. Even the new bands that climb the charts, admittedly with some difficulty, and manage, at times, to catch the attention of an audience wider than committed fans, often draw inspiration from metal's long history. In this regard, people have even spoken of retro-metal in relation to bands like the Swedish Witchcraft, the Australian Wolfmother, and the Texan The Sword. Among the most notable and creative interpreters of this rereading of the past we find Mastodon, who skillfully blend progressive rock and metal, sludge and stoner over the course of a career that opened with the exceptional trio of albums "Remission" (2002), "Leviathan" (2004) and "Blood Mountain" (2006); they're among the metal bands most respected by critics in the century's first two decades.

Practically every style and sub-style of heavy metal coined from its origins to the end of the millennium has found some valid, creative, original reinterpretation. In feeding an unbounded undergrowth that probably has no equal in any other rock subgenre, heavy metal has begun fragmenting into a sprawling, tentacular taxonomy that disorients anyone who cautiously tries to approach the genre. The web of references and citations is so layered that it becomes genuinely difficult to provide a credible map of the branches, even the minor ones, no less original or innovative, of the last twenty years. As proof of this, a niche literature has emerged offering monographs on individual metal subgenres, in an almost superhuman attempt to bring order to a galaxy that, given its size and variety, appears boundless. To get a glimpse of this complexity and richness of variations, one can turn to sites like "Map Of Metal", which nonetheless stops short of attempting a categorization that also covers the 2010s, or click through the more than 330 "metal" tags listed by "Every Noise At Once". Alternatively, one can note that "Rate Your Music" lists, as of 2020, 208,000 releases that can be considered, to varying degrees, "metal": listen to 10 a day and it would take you about 57 years to catch up, and by then you'd still have to reckon with everything released in the meantime. The exhaustive database "Metal Archives" tallies 140,000 different bands: one band a day for roughly the next 380 years, for anyone willing to take on the challenge alongside their children and grandchildren.

So what can we actually do, staying within reach of mere mortals? Let's try to offer a starting point for the more curious reader, going back to the traditional styles born in the previous century and more clearly structured. For each one, we'll provide some in-depth texts, which can in turn serve as a gateway to dig deeper into a given stylistic niche.

The most vibrant and creative subgenre turned out to be black metal, profoundly transformed over the course of its history into music that's progressively more complex and creative, often visionary and proudly experimental. An excellent starting point for exploring this evolution is Antonio Lo Giudice's book "Da Satana all'Iperuranio: 35 anni di black metal in 101 dischi" (2016), which has the merit of bringing together the wild trajectory of this metal subgenre without burying the reader in names and recommended listens. Alternatively, as an introduction, you can read the in-depth piece by the same author published on this very site, or dig into what happened in Iceland in this other feature. For those wanting a complete overview, though, there's nothing left to do but recommend the monumental "Black Metal Compendium," the majestic Tsunami Edizioni project split into three volumes with truly international scope.

There are at least two cases impossible not to mention, even in a broad overview, when it comes to new black metal: the American acts Agalloch and Deafheaven. The former are responsible for a trio of albums of great charm and atmosphere - "Pale Folklore" (1999), "The Mantle" (2002) and "Ashes Against The Grain" (2006) - which outlined a poetic take on atmospheric black metal, folding it into folk-metal and prog-metal structures. Not that the band managed to eclipse many other far more "niche" acts, such as Weakling (see the masterpiece "Dead As Dreams", 2000) or the glacial saga of Paysage d'Hiver (see "Paysage d'Hiver", from 1999, and "Winterkälte", from 2001), but they're notable for being among the few to spark interest beyond the usual circle of fans. To them we owe the first encounter, for many fans - not necessarily metalheads but certainly music lovers - with a new way of understanding black metal, one that would go on to find even greater success, both critical and even with a certain kind of audience, in still more poetic, even psychedelic, incarnations of the subgenre. That seed can be traced through stylistically related acts like Wolves In The Throne Room, or even quite different ones like Nachtmystium, and American black metal in general, which would deserve a dedicated feature of its own. It's impossible to even briefly cover the individual national scenes here, but among them we should spend a few lines on the glorious French scene: from Blut Aus Nord to Alcest, all the way to Peste Noire and beyond for those approaching the genre out of mere curiosity; at least Deathspell Omega and Esoctrilihum for the more seasoned and daring. Finally, three suggestions, among the dozens possible, for anyone wanting to explore some of the genre's true points of no return: the Dutch project Gnaw Their Tongues (at least "L'Arrivée de la Terne Mort Triomphante", 2010) and the Swiss acts Darkspace (at least "III", 2008) and Schammasch (at least "Triangle", 2016). By the 2010s black metal had become so varied, and its borders so blurred, that it easily intertwines with psychedelia (see the Finns Oranssi Pazuzu), with every other conceivable strain of heavy metal, and with various kinds of folk music, to the point of spreading the notion of a post-black metal with fading boundaries. On this point, the second band that absolutely must be mentioned is the aforementioned Deafheaven, who with "New Bermuda" (2015) stirred up debate and interest among music lovers at large: anyone claiming their fusion of shoegaze melody and metallic violence is somehow inauthentic seems to have forgotten what happened with Agalloch and later Alcest. The American acts Pyramids ("Pyramids", 2008) brilliantly summed up the distance between traditional black metal and the subgenre's post-metal dimension right on their debut, also anticipating what we'd later hear from Deafheaven and serving as an ideal synthesis of a fifteen-year span.

Allow us, at this point, a consideration that - without wishing to downplay the importance of individual artists and individual masterpiece albums - gives even the reader less inclined toward metal listening a sense of the critical consensus on the genre as of 2020. On the excellent "Acclaimed Music", it's easy to notice how little heavy metal from the new millennium - even taking the label in a very broad sense - has managed to dethrone the classics that have by now firmly earned their place among the essential listens of any music fan. What's more, among the 81 titles listed, all touched by more or less unanimous critical consensus (yes, including this very site), a full 32 albums date back to the Nineties, 30 to the Eighties, and just 14 to the 2000-2019 period (where the data stops). It's even more telling that the most recent album chronologically is precisely the aforementioned "New Bermuda" (2015), joined by one more Deafheaven record ("Sunbather", 2013), the comeback of Converge in 2012, and the curious collaboration between Sunn O))) and Scott Walker ("Soused", 2014): half the decade didn't see a single metal album earn wide, shared critical consensus! This happens partly out of disinterest and lack of in-depth attention from music writers, sure, but it also confronts even the fan with a hard-to-dispute fact: the genre has lost its ability to influence rock at large, let alone popular music.

That said, allow us to briefly run through death metal, for which we point readers to Stefano Cerati's excellent volume "I 100 migliori dischi death metal" (2012), which nonetheless inevitably misses the latter half of the 2010s. Death metal proved to be a remarkably flexible language for artists of the new millennium, though not quite to the extent of black metal. If the genre's revival, in terms of modest commercial success, was driven by the Swedish melo-death acts Arch Enemy, as Albert Mudrian argues in his "Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore" (2009), the most fertile strand has been technical death metal, carried forward by the labyrinthine Canadians Gorguts ("From Wisdom To Hate", 2001), the fearsome Czechs Lykathea Aflame ("Elvenefris", 2000), the restless New Zealanders Ulcerate ("Everything Is Fire", 2009), the Americans Nile (including the masterpiece "In Their Darkened Shrine", 2002), the terrifying Australians Portal ("Swarth", 2009), the virtuosic Germans Necrophagist ("Onset Of Putrefaction", 2004), the Texans Crimson Massacre ("The Luster Of Pandemonium", 2005), the Floridians Gigan ("The Order Of The False Eye", 2008), the New Yorkers Flourishing ("The Sum Of All Fossils", 2011), and many, many others. What unites these acts is a marked commitment to building complex tracks that demand extreme technical preparation and endless practice, with the result that the brilliance of the best works is offset by the instability of many lineups and the long gaps between writing and releasing music, which often leave fans frustrated. Technical death metal respects the genre's tradition while striving to imagine new internal developments, leaning on an ever-sharper ability to play music that's fast, complex and brutal, and to record it with ever greater fidelity and skill. Death metal, too, has spawned further micro-genres, such as the brutal slam death metal, the ultimate extremization of the already-mentioned Suffocation combined with the splatter imagery of Carcass: the more daring can venture an introduction to the Russian scene with a listen to "Autopsychosis" (2013) by Katalepsy, or throw their eardrums into the hellish experience of "The Anomalies Of Artificial Origin" (2012) by Abominable Putridity. There are also numerous fusions with the already-discussed black metal, as in the case of the Canadians Mitochondrion or the Americans Imperial Triumphant, alongside crossovers with virtually any other metal style, in practically every possible combination. While black metal has seen faint moments of relevance to, at least, music fans not necessarily inclined toward metal, it's much harder to pinpoint even a single death metal album that has left a mark on an audience even slightly wider than the niche itself. That the only plausible candidate seems to be "Surgical Steel" (2013) by Carcass only reinforces the idea that death metal is explored mainly by devoted fans, with new names struggling to break through and catch the attention of other listeners.

If thrash metal was the progenitor of death metal and black metal, then it's fair to say that, precisely because of the creative explosion of its offspring, it has remained in the shadows since the Nineties. All the classics belong to the last century, and the fact that many of the historic acts are still active certainly doesn't make it easier for new blood to emerge. Around the turn of the millennium, though, the Americans Nevermore ("Dreaming Neon Black", 1999) and the groovy veterans Machine Head ("Through The Ashes Of Empires", 2003) stand out, while toward the end of the first decade we should at least mention the labyrinthine, sci-fi-obsessed Vektor ("Black Future", 2009). The acts just mentioned are certainly different from one another, but united by their ability to reread the classics through elaborate, imaginative songwriting. We'll discuss progressive tendencies, in thrash metal and elsewhere, in more depth shortly. First, let's note the existence of a group of bands reviving classic thrash metal, such as the Americans Power Trip and Havok or the Australian thrash-black outfit Destroyer 666, evidence of a still-solid cult following. Giorgio Monaco's "Guida al thrash metal" (2018) is a good starting point for revisiting the classics and also reaching into the new millennium, through a series of precise, concise entries.

A much weightier book is the one Jeff Wagner devoted to progressive metal, titled "Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal" (2012), by now a bit dated but still more than enough to get a picture of the scene up to 2010: listening to all the bands it covers would take months and months of intensive sessions. At the turn of the millennium, some acts enjoyed a critical and popular consensus that, as we've seen, would go on to become increasingly rare in metal circles: just think of the names Tool and Opeth, alongside the already-mentioned and comparable Mastodon, proof that this refined, contaminated and elaborate strain of heavy metal is one of the few able to interest even non-metalhead audiences. The prog-metal world is highly vibrant, even if it rarely compromises with its audience and, as with virtually any "technical" and "virtuosic" offshoot, often appears fragmented into side-projects and stop-start careers. If the millennium opens with the exceptional one-two punch of Maudlin Of The Well ("Bath" and "Leaving Your Body Map", both from 2001), and if the whole twenty-year span is fueled by the manic showmanship of Devin Townsend, it's hard to guide the reader without scattering energy across a list of special cases, footnotes and situations more unique than rare. We can, besides pointing once more to Jeff Wagner's book, mention for narrative continuity the existence of various styles reinterpreted with a progressive spirit: such is the case with the metalcore of the Americans Between The Buried And Me ("Colors", 2007), the new folk experiments of the Romanians Negură Bunget ("OM", 2006) and the Israelis Orphaned Land ("Mabool: The Story of the Three Sons of Seven", 2004), the black metal of bands like the Norwegians Enslaved ("Axioma Ethica Odini", 2010), the power metal of the Danes Wuthering Heights ("The Shadow Cabinet", 2006), the death metal of the New Yorkers Pyrrhon ("The Mother Of Virtues", 2014), the classic death metal fused with sci-fi themes of Blood Incantation ("Hidden History Of The Human Race", 2019), the electronics of the Hungarian project Thy Catafalque ("Geometry", 2018), or the stoner-sludge of Baroness ("Red Album", 2007). It happens, in peculiar cases like the Norwegian prog outfit Leprous, the melancholic Swedes Katatonia, the shapeshifting Norwegian wolves Ulver, or the decadent Englishmen Anathema, that over the course of a career the brutal turns into the whispered and the ferocious becomes poetic, thanks to ever-new declinations of metal's basic ingredients.

If we set aside the curious but limited American power-metal scene (Slough Fest, Eternal Champion, Demon Bitch, Satan's Hallow) and the stoner-sludge niche - which nonetheless found in High On Fire's "Death Is This Communion" (2007) an unexpected moment of relative celebrity - and if we agree not to dwell on the more experimental scenes (though Today Is The Day are unmissable) and post-metal (but do at least listen to Isis), which by their very nature sit "at the border" and are less useful in a general overview like this one, then the other great subgenre to tackle is doom metal. It's hard to imagine, at the heart of a musical genre that treats death as a faithful companion and makes relentless power and slowness its defining traits, quite this much artistic vitality. Rather than dwell on works that, for various reasons, still belong in spirit to the Nineties, like "Dopethrone" (2000) by Electric Wizard or "Dopesmoker" (2003) by Sleep, let's focus our attention on a few exceptional careers. First and foremost, that of the English acts Esoteric, a band that reached its seventh album without any real dip in inspiration, purveyors of a progressive, shapeshifting funeral doom metal that slows down and darkens doom metal even further while making it, at the same time, vibrant with emotion and spiritual suggestion. The only other funeral doom metal band that seems essential to mention, if only to introduce the more curious readers to this micro-genre, is the American acts Bell Witch, who with "Mirror Reaper" (2017) virtually marked the endpoint of an evolutionary path for this highly particular kind of sound.

Related to doom metal is also the drone-metal strand, led by the Japanese acts Boris (essential listening: at least "At Last – Feedbacker –", 2004), the Americans Jesu ("Jesu", from 2004; "Conqueror", 2007; "Infinity" from 2009), and of course the most famous acts in the whole field, Sunn O))), for whom it's hard to choose between "00 Void" (2000), "Black One" (2005) and "Monoliths & Dimensions" (2009). There's no shortage of genuinely violent ultra-doom experiences either, as with Khanate ("Capture And Release", 2005), though these remain the preserve of the most seasoned and daring listeners. It happens, as in the case of the American gothic singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, that the doom-metal vocabulary gets bent to new stylistic ends, far removed from its origins. It's hard to explore, even briefly, a music that has increasingly distinguished itself through its spiritual, meditative, ritualistic, cathartic undercurrent. Here too, we point readers to Stefano Cerati's excellent and up-to-date "I 100 migliori dischi Doom" (2019), which explores, with a gift for synthesis and in a way accessible even to the less initiated reader, a small and obscure stylistic universe.

In closing, hoping the reader will take away more from the ideas offered than from the gaps in this twenty-year overview, allow us a touch of national pride. Some of our own domestic acts of this century have found good reception beyond our borders, and among these the best-known - and the most exceptional case in terms of sheer scale of success - are Lacuna Coil ("Comalies", 2002). Widening the lens, though, we find an often creative and underrated undergrowth, one that rarely wins over the public or critics, even domestically. We'd be straying from the purpose of this overview if we insisted on mapping out the Italian metal scene of this century in full, but for the curious we'll leave a handful of names to start exploring on their own: Ufomammut (sludge-doom-drone-metal), Novembre (gothic-dark-metal), Ephel Duath (prog-avant-metal), Spite Extreme Wing (melodic-black-metal), Rhapsody (power-symphonic-metal), Sadist (prog-death metal), Vision Divine (progressive power metal), Storm{O} (math-core), Nero di Marte (prog-post-metal), Progenie Terrestre Pura (atmospheric black metal), Inchiuvatu (folk black metal), Dark Lunacy (melodic death metal), Canaan (gothic-doom-metal) and Comando Praetorio (black-metal). Just a starting point, sure, but a way of suggesting that even here in Italy metal is still alive and, often, far from lacking in creativity.

APPENDIX: AN INTERVIEW ON METAL (TOMMASO FRANCI ANSWERS ALBERTO CORDEDDU)

Q: In an interview about a musical genre such as Metal, one usually starts with a question about its origins, about the social and above all musical circumstances that gave rise to that evolutionary path of metallic sound. Instead, I want this piece to open with a question about its present, about its contemporary situation, which seems to bear no resemblance at all to the circumstances of the Eighties, the years of its greatest success.

For many figures (musicians, commentators, or simple curious devotees of the genre), Metal is compared to the Phoenix: every so often metal “dies” and then “rises” again from its ashes.

What state is metal in today, in 2004? Is it in crisis? Or, as in the legend of the Phoenix, is it right now “dead”, crushed by other musical genres? Can Nu Metal be considered part of the crisis of so-called “True Metal”?

A: Metal is first and foremost a species of the rock genre, which is in turn an expression of popular music (pop, if you like) defined as such in contrast to classical music. These are obvious things, but it seems that few people, when talking about metal or anything else, remember them. As a “part”, metal cannot but follow the fate of the “whole”. That whole, rock, came to an artistic end in 1991, when its last style, grunge, ran its course. I start from the definition of rock as a genre of popular music played with three instruments (guitar, bass, drums), which formally finds its own identity by distinguishing itself from blues and rhythm and blues through a more syncopated drive and notes that are less blended or drawn out into one another. It is also a fact that blues (and rock'n'roll) was mostly played by black musicians; rock by white ones. Metal is made with those same three rock instruments, and with them, by 1991, everything that could possibly be done in metal had already been done. Not only that: everything that could possibly be said had already been said. Well before 1991, rock, and metal with it, had already become tradition; yet this “formal” tradition still served to express experiential and social “contents” that differed from time to time, even if along the same trajectory of individual and class alienation, suffering, pessimism and lament. By 2004, what could be denied has for years been denied thematically (the rock phenomenon, while splitting into a strand of denial and one of affirmation, leans more towards the former, since it belongs to a historical-cultural context — the last four decades of the twentieth century — in which the collapse of beliefs, values, subjects and objects was not matched by any credible substitute for meaning). What remains is form. Keeping the same, now inflated, themes (the by-now tired refrains still insistently pointing to the lack of any historical or natural foundation), we could vary the form. And no doubt that is what will happen. But it cannot happen with the three instruments of rock, it cannot happen with metal: with those three instruments, everything feasible has been done — to believe otherwise is to not know the history of either rock or metal. The only novelties in rock (and metal) after 1991 lie solely in recording and mixing techniques. Before 1991, rock, or metal, had never died: their styles simply entered crisis and were promptly replaced by others, often more flourishing. Indeed, in hindsight, it's clear that well before any rock species or metal style entered crisis, the groundwork had already been laid for an interesting and guaranteed way past it. Metal in 2004 is not in crisis. Metal, artistically, has not existed for over ten years. That much is proven by the farce they called “nu metal”. You read “nu metal”, but it should read “deja vu metal”. Leaving content aside, the forms of nu metal are nothing but the tired (and poor) rehashing, now of Pantera's street-metal (1990), now of the industrial-metal of Prong (1987) or Helmet (1990), now of the grindcore of Napalm Death (1987), now of the funk-metal of Extreme (1990), now of the crossover of Faith No More (1989), now even of the hardcore-metal of Dead Kennedys (1982). If anything seems irreducible to these precedents, it's down only to the technical evolution of recording and amplification equipment. Not to mention what has always been rock's perennial curse: the recurring, mediocre attempts to make rock instruments and electronics coexist. No rock classic ever needed anything beyond those three instruments and an amplifier, just as no electronic classic ever wanted to compromise itself with rock instruments. The pairing so dear to nu-metal — metal-DJ or metal-rap — touted as originality, is honestly laughable: after all, in the second half of the '80s, Beastie Boys and Public Enemy (so influential on the nu-metal generation) certainly didn't abuse rap or electronics to rekindle an insignificant metal or hardcore; rather, they started from rap and, by weighing it down, arrived at results that were sometimes metal, sometimes hardcore. If, artistically and historically, no rock or metal band is justified after 1991, there remains the problem of the millions of kids who are innately searching for cathartic-consoling outlets, that is, for moral or aesthetic supports to bear the weight of life. This is a thorny problem. And in part, if popular music had abruptly stopped in 1991, it might have seemed to these kids that life and the world ought to have stopped, or should be made to stop, in 1991. We are at a moment of transition between rock and other forms of popular music (electronic music). And in fact one can neither expect rock fans to shut themselves away in the past, nor expect electronic music fans to be able to anticipate the future. A future that is already taking shape, while today's revival bands (metal or rock) dole out the last, meagre consolations (or dishonest illusions). Already (and for some time now) electronic music — where, thanks partly to the bond that this art form, perhaps more than any other, has with technology, there is still much to experiment with — is splitting into styles. Styles that each seem to correspond to a rock counterpart: progressive, hardcore, pop, singer-songwriter fare in electronic guise are already a reality. The natural, human instincts once answered by the now-defunct metal-rock will be answered by a futuristic electronic-metal. Unfortunately for us, 2004, or 2000, or 1995, mean uncomfortable and insignificant limbo states in which one is authorized neither to hope nor to despair. The rampant ignorance (or fear) in the rock and electronic fields shows how hard it is (partly understandably) to respect such a prescription.

Q: I too believe metal is dead artistically, and so-called Nu Metal cannot be recognized as a continuation of the genre. So if we were to look at the artistic landscape right now, we'd notice a scattering of individual cases, each different from the other, which can nonetheless be grouped into two opposite extremes: on one side we find emerging bands intent on innovating the metal world by bringing in other instruments (consider the unthinkable role of the DJ) and experimenting with new sounds (thanks to technological progress in instruments). On the other side we find those artists who carry forward the strand of metal already produced and marketed previously: veteran artists unable (or unwilling) to update their style (see Iron Maiden), or new artists who nostalgically attempt a «turning back» to the origins, trying to recreate that sound (and that artistic and cultural «climate») typical of the '80s. We both know this line of thinking has no future, because it would be damn ahistorical.

So: in between these two opposite poles, there is a void — in fact, if we went into a well-stocked record shop, we wouldn't find a valid alternative. Don't you think?

A: With your own money and your own time, you can do as you please. However, for the sake of the moral of history and of art, it is not just pointless but reckless to buy a rock (and therefore metal) album released after 1991. What remains is that kid, with that money, that time, and above all with those feelings that should let him fill that time. From 1967 to 1991, a “wide variety” of albums came out, in “sufficient” number to give vent to all sorts of feelings and to fill up a lifetime. Still, the present demands its own reckoning. What's more, our current musical or artistic present is the worst possible one, being the most powerless, the most post-, the most in-between. Besides, excellent rock songs (excellent examples of art) have appeared even after '91, and still do today. Indeed, one must distinguish between the historical-artistic end of a genre and the survival of a tradition that, in individual performers, can still offer engaging moments (though artistically and historically pointless: largely emotionally pointless too, given that the emotional range of the modern teenager has already been thoroughly explored by traditional rock). People refuse to believe that rock is dead because even after its death there are excellent songs. But this is not a contradiction. Even in 2004 one can paint excellent Impressionist pictures; it's just that this is an inherent uselessness, and above all it isn't art: lacking originality, being a copy in every respect (starting with the very label “Impressionist”) of artistic expressions over a century old. The fact that there are examples of good rock songs after '91 is both a bad thing and a good thing, certainly a necessity typical of every period of stalemate and transition. It's bad because it creates illusions about the life of a corpse; it's good because it lets many kids, unable to bow to history (and listen to old records), avoid (artistic) suicide. After all, the natural force of history, with its rhythms and its pains, whether felt or not, will find its outlet regardless, and if rock can no longer be, it simply won't be. Coming to metal, Anathema with “The Silent Enigma” (1995) offer an actual example of an entire metal album made when metal was already dead, and yet, as the average listener would say, “beautiful”. Artistically, Celtic Frost had already said, back in 1987, everything that Anathema would later say. And by “artistically” I mean not just form (the notes and how they're played) but also substance (the songs' content, the existentialism, the feeling). That Anathema record can be considered the best of the post-'91 era, but Moonspell, At The Gates, Machine Head, Fear Factory, and Sepultura have also produced work of great value, often with performers technically more accomplished on their individual instruments than the classics (the problem being that these superb performers are playing the classics' sheet music). It is nonetheless true that the further we move from 1991, the fewer great metal (or rock) albums appear in the world of non-metal (or non-rock), so much so that the urge to try buying an album released in January 2004 has no reason to exist (and being generous towards the champions of “nu metal”, after the mid-'90s debut of Korn and Deftones, there's really nothing else on offer anyway).

Classic metal bands (unlike punk and hardcore ones) tend to have extremely long lifespans, sometimes as long as rock itself (think of Black Sabbath or Scorpions). Still, there isn't a single case worth noting beyond the first three or four albums. Just imagine what Iron Maiden (or Judas Priest, or Ozzy Osbourne) are worth by their twentieth album or so! On top of the usual talk about the band-as-industry or the musician-as-manager, it should also be added that these are, in any case, people who, beyond the more superficial submission to market laws, have — whether they're fully aware of it or not — just as strong a dependence on their own celebrity and role, but also, and this is the cause of it, on their own communicative or artistic drive. With the money they've amassed, Metallica would have endless ways to put it to use (perhaps even more profitably!) rather than put themselves on the line with yet another record. These billionaires actually live out a genuine tragedy and, whether they hide their money or not, they're worse off with it than when they had none (because no kind of inspiration warms them anymore). How do people like the members of Metallica feel, after inventing thrash and speed metal — not now, but ever since, from the moment right after those inventions — finding themselves still young and full of energy yet with nothing left to say, in a state of total aridity and stupidity? They stuff themselves with illusions and carry on down a path they couldn't cut short except by suicide (Cobain killed himself at 27 because another Nirvana album was impossible; Cobain didn't kill himself at 22 because he still had three Nirvana albums to make). In 2004, the desperate drift of the classic rock or metal acts intersects with the other, essentially identical, existential drift of the young (musicians and listeners alike). Herein lies both the justification and the cause for a rock or metal album in 2004.

Q: So metal would seem destined for a permanent, irreversible artistic death. And yet we mustn't forget the cultural and social void that swept over Metal following the exhaustion of one particular subgenre: the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), despite the success of its leading bands (Saxon, Motőrhead and Iron Maiden), which was in fact growing enormously. Indeed, during this historical period (the first half of the '80s) people thought Metal was in crisis from various points of view. And only a few years later, a new sound filled that void: something that managed to revolutionize the very concept of Metal and its stereotypes (before, the metalhead was pictured with a motorbike, a leather jacket, beer and studs; now the two main metal stereotypes are «inhuman screams» and «noise»). People moved away from that hyped-up optimism (inherited from the yuppie era) and discovered, within the same genre, new feelings: pain, death, destruction, decay. This is the era of so-called thrash metal. Indeed, only after the advent of thrash (which owes a debt to the world of old-school punk) was metal combined with other musical genres.

Don't you think the evolution of metal owes more credit to the world of the market than to the fruit of sonic experimentation? If, for instance, the various business and marketing professionals hadn't seen thrash as a “commercial” genre between 1983 and 1989, don't you think bands like Exodus, Death Angel, Forbidden and many others would have been perceived differently? In other words, don't you think the various “trends” of Metal (thrash, black, power, etc.) are the fruit of «commercialized fads» (like the «fad» for hip-hop in recent years)?

A: This question too, like the previous ones, applies to metal only insofar as it applies more broadly to rock. To briefly clarify the complicated relationship between art(rock) and the market, it can broadly be said that the latter is never a cause of the former. Or at least not of the former's essence. Metallica invented speed and formalized thrash in 1983: at the time, this was a revolution in no way driven by market laws or plans. Judas Priest kicked off NWOBHM in 1976, doing something stylistically and thematically opposite to punk right at the very moment punk was exploding. Beyond that, metal is bound to market laws just as any other musical genre is, just as a painting is, just as we ourselves are, writing these very words right now.

To address the rest of the question point by point. 1) No cultural or social void swept over metal when NWOBHM entered crisis: at most, that affected the English scene, certainly not America or the rest of the world; America, incidentally (aside from the late-'60s proto-metal of acts like MC5 and Blue Cheer) had not yet developed a metal tradition of its own (Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Kiss are hard rock). 2) Moreover, in England, at the very same time the NWOBHM flame was dying out (and even before that), metal was finding its most foundational and important experiences: on one hand Motorhead (who are anything but NWOBHM! in fact they define themselves in opposition to that style), the inventors of thrash metal; on the other, their disciples Venom, who in 1980 laid the groundwork for black metal. English 1980 is also marked as the year of Black Sabbath's influential “Heaven and Hell” with R.J. Dio, and of the old-style Black Sabbath revival by Angel Witch. 3) The brief period (perhaps just the year 1982?) of NWOBHM's decline, while surely not perceived as such by its contemporaries (in England the first Iron Maiden album with Dickinson comes out, in Italy there's a boom of NWOBHM-style bands), was experienced outside England as a moment of free experimentation (in 1982, in Los Angeles, Metallica are already playing live the material that would become “Kill'em All”; Mercyful Fate in Denmark and Accept in Germany found power metal in both its “dark” and “light” guises; Twisted Sister in New York produce a glam-metal as heavy as it is catchy). 4) There was no real break in continuity in the passage from NWOBHM to American speed and thrash heavy metal; indeed the two phenomena merged, and it was this fusion (around the mid-'80s) that plunged the world of popular music (and hence its market too) into full-blown metal fever; it was then that the average listener ranged across genres as different as speed, NWOBHM, dark, power, death (invented by Possessed in 1985), even hard rock (especially with hard-hitting acts like Motley Crue and Scorpions), ultimately lumping everything under the metal umbrella. 5) Metal (like every art form) evolved in its crucial essence independently of any market contingency or rational plan: the history of the true innovators can be traced, and the innovators depend on their own forebears just as their own successors depend on them, but within this chain (in certain links made up of unknown names) no law other than that of a naturally artistic evolution can find a place. The fact that being naturally an artist means having awareness of, and experiencing, a whole range of things — including the degeneration of society and, with it, of artistic tastes — is another matter altogether: it is the entry of the market into art as an object of reflection, not as an arbiter of taste. Indeed, the best artists set themselves apart from all the rest precisely when, while the mediocre ones surrender to the taste of the majority, they impose their own taste instead. Exodus's debut album (1985) is among the best thrash records for exactly this reason: from Metallica they took the art (thrash), not, from the market, the commercialization of that art. It's no coincidence that Exodus are genre classics. The same goes for Death Angel (also for their debut work): one mustn't confuse an artist drawing on a model to make further art with drawing on that model to make it commercially palatable, nor confuse bad works of art (such as, for instance, Exodus's and Death Angel's post-debut work) with attempts at commercialization. If it makes sense to talk about the commercialization of a work of art (if it is a work of art, whether it's reproduced in one copy or a thousand makes no difference; if it isn't, it's certainly not the reproduction that makes it one), it makes no sense to see this as a conditioning cause behind the crucial outcomes of art itself.

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16/02/2026